Meghan Chase has never fit in at her small-town high school, and now, on the eve of her 16th birthday, she discovers why. When her half brother is kidnapped, Meghan is drawn into a fantastical world she never imagined–the world of Faery, where anything you see may try to eat you, and Meghan is the daughter of the summer faery king. Now she will journey into the depths of Faery to face an unknown enemy . . . and beg the help of a winter prince who might as soon kill her as let her touch his icy heart. The Iron King is the first book in the Iron Fey series.

Review

I’ve had The Iron King on my TBR list for a while. I bought both the audio book and the Kindle book within the last few months because they were on sale. It was voted as the Book of the Month in a group I’m in on Goodreads, and I was in need of a new audio, so I decided to bump The Iron King up my list.

The Iron King starts off pretty typically to me. Nerdy/dorky/unliked high school girl finds out that everything is not as she thinks it is in her world, and that certain supernatural creatures exist, and then finds out she’s one of them. I’ve seen this several times in reading paranormal/fantasy novels. It’s predictable but not unlikable.

I found it pretty interesting once Meghan enters the Nevernever (Fairyland). I thought that the world was really well-developed and that Kagawa had a very interesting spin on faeries. Sometimes the world building dragged the story down a bit for me, but I find that this happens a lot in series premieres, so I was able to deal with it.

Meghan kind of drove me nuts sometimes because I honestly felt like she just intentionally stuck her head in the sand sometimes. She had a hard time facing the truth of her situation in the Nevernever. This got better as the story continued, though. I loved Puck and Ash, and I thought that their interactions created great comic relief.

It seemed to take a long time to actually introduce the Iron Fey and Iron King, but I found it really interesting once they did. This was definitely a new and interesting concept to me, and I found myself much more invested in the story. There were a few scenes that I was actually very anxious to see how they’d pan out. And I felt that the ending was great. It definitely wrapped up the events of The Iron King nicely but also left enough to open to make me want to read the rest of the series.

Just as a little extra, I listened to this one on audio. I thought that Khristine Hvam did a really good job. And after flipping through my kindle version here and there to see what page I was on, I saw some words that I would never have pronounced correctly, so I’m glad I listened to the audio version. I would recommend The Iron King in any form, but I would definitely recommend the audio version.